The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for making and assembling magazines containing billing elements and envelopes. More particularly the invention relates to novel systems and apparatus for printing and assembling magazines or cataloges or booklets or other books, printing billing elements and addressing, forming and placing remittance envelopes in the magazine, catalog, booklet or other book as an integral part thereof, during the assembly thereof.
The mail order business and mail transactions have expanded at a very rapid rate. Mail order catalogs are no longer limited to the large stores having local stores throughout the country. As a method of expanding their business, single stores, such as a sporting goods store in Maine or a western tack store in Colorado or a sporting goods store in Wisconsin for example, are printing catalogs, mailing the catalogs nation wide, and are carrying on a nation wide mail order business, with a reasonable amount of success. Television has been used as a sales medium where products may be purchased via telephone and/or mail throughout most of the nation. Much of these transactions are carried out through the mail.
It is usual that the same article or product sold direct, that is, sold to a walk-in customer in the store, and sold by mail from the same store, are sold at the same price. Since the same product is sold at the same price whether the sale be a direct sale or a mail order sale, the margin of profit to the store from these different type sales differs because of the different over head costs involved.
One of the factors reducing the margin of profit for the seller in the mail order business is the cost of mail and billing the customer. The cost of mail, that is stamps is a fixed cost, fixed by the Postal Service but the billing costs, that is, providing billing elements including printed statements or invoices and return or remittance envelopes is a variable cost.
Although the billing elements are usually sent out in some form of invoice and forwarded to the purchaser as a separate sheet or sent with the purchased article, the remittance envelope is usually a separate envelope, separate from the invoice. The remittance envelope is a secure envelope provided to the purchaser for forwarding payment of the purchase made.
Paramount in the mail order business is the magazine or book subscriber business, that is where a person subscribes to a magazine or book and receives the magazine or book periodically, through the mail. In the case of a magazine or book, invoices and remittance envelopes are sent to the subscriber in several ways. Often the book is enclosed in a hard cover or box type package and the billing elements are in a separate envelope secured to the exterior of the box type package containing the book. In other cases, where the purchase is a magazine the invoice and remittance or return envelopes are often stapled or attached to the inside of the magazine.
The above defined methods of sending invoices and/or remittance envelopes are expensive and time consuming and often require additional and/or out-of-step operations from the packaging and/or assembly of the product sold.